Darkness swathed the parlor, the fire and the silver glow of the winter moon through the window serving as the room’s only sources of light.

She lay draped upon the chaise that I’d had Guilt and Guile lift and draw closer to the fire. Sitting up, she searched for me, yet her eyes did not wander to where I’d sat for the past several hours, keeping watch over her. Instead, she turned toward the sound that, though softer than the fire’s crackling and the mantel clock’s ticking, had awakened her.

The whispers. Those of Envy and Spite.

Having had their usual perch stolen from them, the gossiping duo loitered nearby, their forms silhouetted by the moonlit bay window.

“Shh,” hissed Envy. “She’s awakened.”

“Oh, this ought to be interesting,” answered Spite.

I took that as my cue to stand. Better I reveal my presence to Stephanie now than have it betrayed by one of that pair.

“They are nothing to fear,” I said.

Stephanie’s head snapped in the direction of my voice, so much altered from the one she had come to know.

I moved forward, melting out of the darkness and just into the outer rim of the firelight.

In response, Stephanie pulled the quilt Desire had laid over her tighter to herself with the hands I had bandaged.

“What happened?” she asked, her hushed tone implying she was asking herself rather than me. Still, I chose to answer.

“You fell into the lake, and I extracted you.”

“The ice,” she said, her memory rejoining her. “It closed over.”

“Yes.”

“How did you . . . ?”

“I am stronger than I appear.”

“But . . . I was drowning.” She pressed a hand to her chest, fingers tightening around the white fabric of the cotton nightgown she now wore.

“You expelled the water while unconscious.”

The truth was that I had forced her lungs to eject the water, utilizing the same abilities to preserve her life that I had employed to nearly end Rastin’s. But she had been through enough, and that information would only serve to alarm her further.

“The man,” she said with a gasp, as if she had somehow read my thoughts. “The one who came for me. Did you kill him?”

“That man lives,” I said through a sneer.

“You let him go?”

Could I say that? I could. Though it would be more accurate to say he escaped.

“I have said I did not kill him. Believe that or don’t.”

She glowered at me, hating me as she did. As perhaps she now always would.

“You can’t be him,” she said, shaking her head. “You can’t.”

I frowned beneath Wrath’s mask, the pain in my sternum twisting. By “him,” of course, she meant Erik.

“To that, I have but one answer,” I replied. “Within this Moldavia, I am the only ‘he’ and, in fact, besides yourself now, the only one there is.”

“The other masked figures—” she whispered.

Her expression shifted in the firelight, betraying how she had already solved the riddle of the masks. But perhaps it would be best for us both to leave her no room to doubt.